Forty Years of Cataloguing Historic Scientific Instruments

Morrison-Low, A D

Forty Years of Cataloguing Historic Scientific Instruments

Resource type

Book chapter

Creator (person)

Morrison-Low, A D

ORCID

Date published

November 27, 2025

Abstract

For the forty years of the Scientific Instrument Commission’s formal existence, from 1981 to 2021, there have been a number of ways to publicise what historic scientific instruments were to be found where: (1) There were efforts to map out what was held in public collections on a national scale, to produce published national inventories, gradually building up a global picture. (2) At the same time, there were ambitions to catalogue individual items in a more comprehensive manner, collections of similar instruments held in a single location, usually by the larger museums. (3) With time and radical changes in inventory methods, versions of online museum collections could be accessed by members of the public. (4) A fourth, non-institutional form of catalogue was made by dealers in historic scientific instruments, initially in printed form and then electronically, delivered straight to the likely purchaser’s desk. (5) Finally, a fifth form of catalogue was that made by the collector, often as important as many of the foregoing. This paper will consider how these five forms of catalogue have developed, or not, over the past forty years. The author of this paper – who was fortunate to hold a curatorial position at a major national museum from 1980 until 2015 – can only draw on limited international experience after a career spent almost entirely in the English-speaking sphere. A broader resumé or perhaps several, from other points of view, may be inspired by this piece.